Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Wed. April 17, 1991
Pacific Coliseum
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Audioarchivist Analog Master Cassette Recording
Digitally transferred and ReMastered at 24 bit 96 khz
Downsampled and dithered to 16 bit 44.1 khz CD ready files

Setlist:
01 intro – Star Spangled Banner
02 Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
03 Crime In The City
04 Blowin’ In The Wind
05 Love To Burn
06 Cinnamon Girl
07 Mansion On The Hill
08 Fuckin’ Up
09 Cortez The Killer
10 Powderfinger
11 Love And Only Love
12 Rockin’ In The Free World
13 encore break
14 Roll Another Number

Capture:
Sony PC-62 stereo condenser mic on hat > Sony stereo mic extension cord > Sony WM DC3 Professional Recording Walkman (Dolby B on, CrO2 / Metal bias) > Maxell XL-II 90 cassette masters

Location:
Pacific Coliseum – blue seat (upper level)
My seat was originally Sec 8 Row 30 Seat 12 (upper left side)
I moved to the back to be in the middle. Center line of the building!
Recorded from section 33 upper blue in the very back, far away.
It was a very loud show and it sounded great from this distance.

Transfer:
Maxell XL-II 90 cassette masters > Tascam 202mkII playback deck (Dolby off, normal bias PB, azimuth adjusted for each tape side) > Radio Shack gold end 3.5mm to stereo rca cord > Shack 6 foot gold end 3.5mm stereo extension cord > Soundblaster Audigy @ 24 bit 96 khz > Wavelab 5.01b (recording, tracking, and mastering)

Processing:
24 bit 96 khz master clone split files > Wavelab toolsone (level balance) > Waves Q10 Paragraphic EQ (bass ramp and mid-high tweaks)> Waves S1 Shuffler (stereo enhancement) > Wavelab peak master (limiter @ -.01db) > 24 bit 96 khz batch rendered Remaster files > SoX resampler via Foobar2000 to 44.1 khz (very high quality setting, 95.2% passband, 25% phase response no aliasing) > iZotope RX Advanced MBit+ dither to 16 bit (Ultra noise shaping, high dither) > FLAC8 + torrent via TLH > YOU!!!

Quality:
One of my better recordings I think. Ex- for an audience recording of its time, comparing to some others I’ve heard from this tour… You be the judge! Bright and clear and full frontal sonic assault, just as it was that night! Crank it up! Full dynamics – be warned of Neil’s shrieking guitar work that can rip your face off (even at this distance!)…

Comments:
I think this one turned out amazingly good, especially considering how far back I was! I knew Neil’s show was going to be a loud one on this tour, and that there wasn’t going to be any “quiet” songs! I could have possibly moved to a seat in the lower level to be a bit closer, but it was a pretty full arena that night, and I probably would have had to be asked to move. The section I was in was not deserted, but had plenty of room for a wandering fan unhappy with his assigned seat. I picked a chair that was exactly parallel with the mid-line of the building, perfectly centered in the middle of the P.A. I wasn’t exactly back row at the top, but probably about 2/3 up the section. The closest people were maybe 10 seats away in any direction, so there isn’t very much close proximity audience noise.

I remember thinking how odd the prop Fender Giant amps looked from this distance – almost normal! Then these little ants that were the band came out on stage, and made this behemoth sound come through the P.A. system! Amazing soundman they must have, and a great audio system as well. I went to look at the soundboard area and remember seeing the bank of Tascam DA-88’s recording 24 tracks of digital (3 units linked up) – I don’t think any of the Vancouver show made it onto Arc / Weld, and I think this was a great show, so I wonder if maybe one of their tapes failed or something on this night? Hmmm……

So, yeah, even at this distance, I still remember this as being one of the loudest shows I’ve ever been to – especially in The Pacific Coliseum. I kind of felt sorry for the people who were right up close to the speakers! I’ve read that Neil got hearing damage from mixing the recordings they had for the live album (has nothing to do with playing the damned shows that loud, does it? nooo… haha) and in doing the “mastering” work that I’ve done for my little release here, I think I might have done some not-so-good things to my hearing, too (has absolutely nothing to do with seeing several hundred concerts through life, nooo….) but I can assure you that this show sounds really good cranked up loud! What?

I like this recording a lot. I read something that Jimmy Page said about recording techniques: “…distance creates depth…” and I applied this expression to recording this show. You can hear that the stage is deep and straight in front of me, and you can distinctly hear the left and right sides of the entire coliseum filling up with this rolling wall of sound that washes over the audience and rattles the rafters of the building and crashes down all at once onto my microphone. There is very little “backbeat” echo because of this effect of the reverb and P.A. sound reaching me almost at the same time. I don’t think these seats would have worked so well for other (quieter) shows, but this one was well loud enough to carry up to where I was. The tones from the guitars that seem to ring out from different places in the hall are well preserved on this recording. It’s amazing that it just comes from that itty-bitty Sony mic that comes standard with the Sony WM D3 walkman. I’d have to put this one in my personal top ten recordings list… somewhere!

It sure was a blast to watch Neil pretty much give birth to “grunge music” right in front of my eyes! haha. More or less. Awesome to see a band rock it out so hard with such a sense of urgency to it. It’s this sense of urgency especially in some of Neil’s vocals that (I think) might make this one of the better shows of the tour (that I’ve heard). I’m no expert, but for how many times he’s played Vancouver I think he must like it there, and he probably tries harder to put on a good performance here. With that in mind, have a listen to my newly released master recording and hear this great show yourself!

Other than a few tape-to-tape EQ’d to death copies that I made for a few friends around ’92 – ’93 I’ve never really gotten this one out there before now. Brand new digitization march 2011 @ 24 / 96 hi-res, EQ’d to enhance bass, stereo field also enhanced slightly, downsampled and dithered to CD ready FLAC files for your convenience. Sorry about the poorly timed tape flip in “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World” – I was watching the tape reel wind down trying to get the end of “Love And Only Love” complete, waiting for the break to flip tapes. That break never came exactly as planned. The blank tape playback here represents approximately how much of the whole show is missing from tap flips. There’s another gap between “Love To Burn” and “Cinnamon Girl” just missing a few seconds of crowd noise…

I did tape Sonic Youth as well. I know that their fans will want that posted as well. I have no idea what most of the songs are called, so it’s hard to track their set. If you’d like to help with some naming schemes for their part, drop a line and we’ll hook something up…

Please don’t Re-Re-ReMaster this version of this show. The files have already been processed once, as well as them being “only” CD quality files. I will most likely release a full hi-res master clone version of this show in the future to please both the 24/96 fans and the Re-Re-Remasterbastardizers out there! hehe. Please share these lossless files freely – don’t buy don’t sell – but only share them as their original full lossless fileset. Feel free to include any new files (like art or a new text file or something) with the originals if you re-post elsewhere, but always keep the full original fileset (including this info file) fully intact! Don’t change or delete any original files.

Please don’t encrap this lossless fileset to eMPty3 format unless it is only for personal use. Better yet – don’t pervert the files to eMPty3 at all! haha. Do not distribute to anyone as lossy files. Friends don’t let friends listen lossy. Destroy used eMPty3 files when done with them. Keep your FLAC files handy for when you get a better audio system or for when you get the results of that much-needed hearing test!

Please share any cool photoshop-y artworx covers with us! Please email me copies if possible, and maybe consult with me as you work on your art, as I would love to maybe have a touch of input on the wording on the covers. Thanks!

Enjoy my original master recording that’s been previously uncirculated until now. Didn’t mean to keep it from anyone, but it takes time to transfer and process several boxes of various analog masters! I guess that I just finally got around to this one.

Keep on fuckin’ up the free world!

Oh, wait… That’s wrong. Nevermind……

audioarchivist@hotmail.com